(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, John Henry-Westen, Father Charles Murr, and Frank Wright discuss the $150,000 bounty placed on Donald Trump’s head by his would-be assassin, the man’s alleged Deep State connections, the former president’s comments at a campaign rally that women won’t be thinking about abortion anymore if he is reelected, his recent endorsements from Jordan Peterson and Chloe Cole, Pope Francis tripling down on his comments that all religions lead to God, and more.
The panel discussed a recently released letter written by Trump’s would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, months before the attempt that offered $150,000 to “whomever can finish” the job. Questions have been raised about what the motivations are behind releasing this letter to the public now and about Routh’s possible connections to the Deep State.
Wright noted some of the evidence of Routh’s Deep State connections:
It’s to be remembered … [Routh] had in his possession nine phones in total that have been accounted for so far, has committed over 70 crimes, was involved in recruiting ISIS fighters and other Islamic militants to fight in the war in Ukraine, allegedly at the assistance of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. This is a man who appears to have links to what we would call the Deep State. Now, of course, if you mention these things, you’re called a paranoid wingnut conspiracy theorist.
But most people are similarly unaware of the fact that wingnut paranoid conspiracy theorists such as myself remember that George Kennan, the architect of U.S. Cold War policy, wrote a document in 1948 called “Organized Political Warfare,” and that document was about the creation of what we now call the Deep State, and … it was a manifesto for mobilizing every activity political and cultural, nationally and internationally, in what he called organized political warfare, which means that the CIA created a number of front groups around the world doing things as bizarre as sponsoring musicians and artists such as Jackson Pollock, as well as reaching deep into political organizations and creating NGO grassroots worldwide to destabilize governments and to suppress dissent at home.
So it’s far from paranoid to suggest that such an obviously dubious man may have connections to a 70-year operation in the United States to subvert its domestic and international politics using violent and non-violent means.
Wright added that Routh’s history and the fact that this letter was released now show a demonstrably corrupt justice system.
Fr. Murr agreed, saying the older he gets, the more he believes in conspiracy theories. He emphasized how strange it is that we had to wait for details to emerge after John F. Kennedy’s assassination and others, yet this letter threatening Trump is released early in the investigation.
“We have to wait and wait and wait, sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes forever. But in this case, the offer of a bounty on our former president’s head is immediate news; there’s no problem with that. We can announce that as part of a news story. Well, Trump’s son does well to caution all of us [that] there’s something going on here, and there certainly is. It certainly is when you’re announcing something like that, knowing that you could keep that hushed and want to make that one of the primary news stories out, there’s something very wrong,” the priest said, adding that there truly is evil involved in the upcoming U.S. election.
Later in the episode, the panel turned to news from the Vatican, where Pope Francis last week tripled down on his comments during an address to young people in Singapore that “every religion is a way to arrive at God.” After some clerics and “popesplainers” tried to say that’s not what he meant, Francis doubled down by saying that the “diversity of religious identities is a gift from God.” This time the Pontiff tripled down, telling an interreligious meeting in Paris that “divine inspiration” is “present in every faith.”
Westen noted how weird it is that the statement sounds he’s channeling John Lennon’s “Imagine” song. “[The Pope’s statement] sounds so much like it, but Francis gives the hint. He says… ‘Imagine Peace,’ which is the whole song of John Lennon. But here, these are the Pope’s words: “’Imagine Peace’ … is most eloquent. We need to keep meeting, to weave bonds of fraternity and to allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith, in order to join in ‘imagining peace’ among all peoples.’”
“Well, that’s just wrong,” the host said.
Fr. Murr underscored that these statements by the Pope showcase the Church’s tragic lack of missionary zeal in the last 50 years, citing a story from a few years ago about a missionary priest in Brazil who was proud that his mission hadn’t baptized anyone in 53 years and this is the direction the Church is heading, out of a desire to be the “church of nice.”
“We all want to be nice. I would just [add] a parenthesis here: Nice comes from ignorance. The root word of nice is ignorance,” Murr said.
The priest then told a story about a funeral Mass he had celebrated with attendees of a variety of faiths, where he caught himself telling the congregation that all they had to do was live according to their religions as best they could.
“I caught myself. I said, No, that’s not really the best you can do; the best you can do is investigate Christianity, right to the roots, and become Catholics. That’s what you can do, and all get to heaven. But it was so tempting to take that easy road and just [say], let’s all be nice, right?” he said.
The priest continued: “You can’t do that, not to somebody who calls Himself the Way, the Life, and the Truth, [who says], ‘I’m the truth, no one gets to the Father’ – let me repeat that, ‘No one gets to the Father…’, He made no exceptions for that – ‘unless he comes through Me.’ ‘I am the only way to the Father,’ period. Didn’t qualify it. That’s the way it is.”
“And He also said something else that’s always struck me as severe because it is severe: ‘Who is ashamed of me will find me ashamed of him on Judgment Day,’ right? This is the man-God that we’re following, these are His commands. This is what He’s saying, period. Now to say that He didn’t say that, or He didn’t mean that, is outrageous.”
Wright highlighted that the signs of the times are a result of a counterfeit culture seeking to replace our civilization created by the Catholic Church between the ninth and 12th centuries.
“It is my belief that the signs of the times that the Holy Father himself would adduce are the signs created by the counterfeit culture whose purpose it is to replace it. It is to replace this civilization with itself and to point to the signs it has made, the signs of social decay or supposed progress, as an indicator of the true path of humanity is an act of deception. Everything that you can see around you is largely downstream of these policies, including the corruption of the Church,” Wright said.
“And it is important to stress right now that one of the greatest tragedies of this situation is that all the answers to our civilization crisis can be found within the Catholic Church and its tradition, and the fact that the Vatican is not supplying these answers right now is simply criminal. It is a terrible tragedy because it leaves millions abandoned and will lead millions more into confusion. It is an attempt to … extinguish the light of salvation itself,” the journalist added.
For more discussion on the possible Deep State connections of Trump’s would-be assassin, the Pope’s latest ecumenical statements, and much more, tune in to this week’s episode of Faith & Reason.
Learn more
Donald Trump takes a brown scapular
Would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh allegedly offered $150k to ‘whomever can finish’ failed attempt
Jordan Peterson says he would vote for Trump if he could
Chloe Cole endorses Trump to put a stop to sex changes for children
Trump says women will not be thinking about abortion if he wins the election
Trump says Christians are being persecuted under Harris
Pope Francis says that divine inspiration is in every religion
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